Another hike, another amazing discovery. And another in an endless series of questions
about who lived in these places, and why.
How to describe these kinds of days? We have an almost steady diet of hikes on old
mountain roads---roads that have usually deteriorated so much that even the
souped-up off-road vehicles can’t get on them.
(good!)
Today was one of those days.
We found and followed an old road. We knew the road went "somewhere," because nobody goes to this much
trouble for “nowhere.” I mean, whose
hobby is it to spend tons of money and spend endless hours building difficult
roads to “nowhere?”
A couple of miles along the trail we saw this. It is impossible to know why it was
constructed, but someone went to a lot of effort. Was it like a snow fence in the Midwest,
except to keep sand from covering the road in this spot? Seems unlikely because that could happen all
up and down the road, although perhaps the builders found that this spot was
particularly prone to the road being covered.
Another mystery. We’ll never
know.
We crested a hill and saw this:
How old? Hard to
tell.
Someone had lived here—it was a home, not a mining shack like
we often see. Someone went to the
trouble to build it and put drywall in it, and then paint it pink. Just to live here? Probably not.
Was there a mine close by? (we couldn’t find one). Was it a family? Is that why there was pink paint?
How did they make it work out here?
There would be no water here, and the distance that would have to be
traveled to get water and food would be daunting. That could require many hours. But here they were—they put up sheetrock,
installed windows with screens, the whole shebang.
Who were they?
Someone had a dream. That
is all we can come up with. A dream to
live here, in this out of the way, hard, desolate place without easy access to
food, heat, water, emergency help, etc.
We hope that dream worked out for them.
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